C&D should have a comparison test format based on the likely daily use. People who buy this sort of vehicle will spend less than 5% of their driving time "shaking them down in mountains" of rural areas. Instead, they will be driving the cars in traffic, on highways, and when commuting to and from the stressful jobs that afforded them the cars in the first place. Under this kind of use, comfort and ergonomics will have higher importance than is likely emphasized in this article.
I appreciate that C&D has its own methodology in weighting each category of evaluation. However, by using a more realistic methodology, the reviews will become more relevant to more people, and thus more useful and valuable.
For this reason, I, and I am sure many other C&D readers, look forward to C&D long term tests, which are more balanced and usually end in a different result from these short term tests. It would be refreshing to see comparison tests adopt a similar approach - car buyers, after all, usually own their vehicles for years, and will come to appreciate the cars for different reasons from what can be derived from test drives.